


[intervention]

by John the Alligator (Chyronic)



Series: Magic A/B/O Trainwreck [3]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:53:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyronic/pseuds/John%20the%20Alligator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>This fic, and this series, have been abandoned.</b>
</p><p><i>He can’t seem to make her believe them without including himself, the way he could do with any illusion that played on the physical senses. Jace has to think these things first. And he can’t pull out of her head far enough to not feel her pain, her panic, if he wants to be able to take full control as quickly as he needs to. Which means he feels the realization when it’s hit her, watching through her eyes as she realizes that the hooded figure her focus kept sliding off before is responsible for her own mind trying to kill her.</i>


 

-

Jace got squeamish about violence again. Tezzeret's alternative has some unexpected, though not unwelcome, consequences. For him, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[intervention]

**Author's Note:**

> (If you need to skip the explicit suicidal ideation, it's the block italicized paragraph.)

Her hair is somewhat out of place from her fretting at it and her eyes are hot and swolen, but that’s all she has to show for herself. A moment to fix her hair and scrub at her wet face with a sleeve and she could face her patron in the guild, in a pinch; if there were a window in the door of this featureless gray room she’d probably look just fine to a random passerby, even now. No one’s _done_ anything to her, in any traditional sense, but her throat’s blown out from screaming.

The Orzhov has lost count of how many times she’s sat gasping for breath while her lungs are momentarily clear, or looked around as if a way out—unarmed, in a building and a district she barely knew existed—will mainfest any second now. But this must be longer than she’s been freed before, she thinks, long enough that maybe it’s the end, they’ve gotten what they wanted or given up, that the man who watches impassively when she cries will let her go—

 _Darkness closes over her like black ice water. Already leaning on the table, her arms go out from under her, energy sapped so she goes limp, barely breathing: why would she breathe, why would she_ bother _? The thoughts are no less arresting for all it still feels that they’re pouring in through her ears, her eyes, the air turned freezing oppressive water that leaches death into her head. She thought she was going to escape? She thought her guild would take her back if she did? They barely even tolerated her as it was; if she goes back now she’ll be beneath even the contempt they’d held for her before. It doesn’t matter whether she betrays the Syndicate or not; in their eyes, they were looking to be rid of her anyway; she’s worse than useless, a drain on resources that should be reserved for those who deserve to live, a human bleeding sore on the face of the city. As soon as she sees any of the people she’d conned into putting up with, investing in,_ loving _her again they’ll know, they’ll realize what she is and what she’s done to them and how she deserves to die, and they’ll take back what she’s stolen from the real people who make out the rest of the world by so much as_ existing _in her screams, in her blood, in her flesh, in public, and nothing she could give would be enough but she’s still the selfish, ruinous, worthless piece of shit who got this far so she’d still hope for a quick death even as she knew she didn’t deserve it. Better to end it now: she can give herself the undeserved mercy of a rapid end, at least, maybe even a painless one. She should have died at birth—no, that’s still nine months of care and hours of labor from her mother—she never should have been conceived, but there’s no way she can repay the debt incurred by decades of breathing real people’s air and eating their food and taking their affection for only the maintenance of a soulless worthless freak in return. At least she can stop taking and taking and_ taking _now, and she will, she’ll just… there’s got to be something she can do, as soon as she can lift her head; would the man—the two men, there's another, how hadn't she seen him, it must just be another example of her fundamental failures and it doesn't_  matter _, not when_ — _would the men watching_ _her let her beat her brains out on the table? Would they give her something to kill herself with if she begged them? A knife would be enough, a belt, a rope, is there any part of her clothing that would do? All she needs is to be able to gather the energy to speak and she’ll—_

Jace gasps involuntarily and jerks the guildmage out of her thoughts (or rather his thoughts) nowhere near as gently as he intended. She sits upright on reflex as soon as the motor control’s hers again, back straight from years of obligation and training, and this time, she turns immediately to Jace. He flinches. Jace can feel her lingering pain through his neck and shoulders; a couple rounds of this ago he started leaning on the wall and now it’s taking effort to keep his legs under him. And that’s just using himself as a focus, gathering these thoughts and channeling them towards her—he can’t seem to make her believe them without including himself, the way he could do with any illusion that played on the physical senses. Jace has to think these things first. And he can’t pull out of her head far enough to not feel her pain, her panic, if he wants to be able to take full control as quickly as he needs to. Which means he feels the realization when it’s hit her, watching through her eyes as she realizes that the hooded figure her focus kept sliding off before is responsible for her own mind trying to kill her.

And she’s _terrified_ , the emotion quickly gaining clarity and focus:

She fears him more than she fears Tezzeret, now. Jace is there for the exact instant it happens, when the fact that she knows this is _being done to her_ is more important than her surmising that it’s on Tezzeret’s orders, when she decides she’ll do anything to make the process stop because she needs to get away from not Tezzeret and the Consortium but only Jace, in himself. She thinks fast and he’s caught in the feedback loop of watching her process, while she stares at him and her fists curl in a desperate bid for magic that doesn’t come any more than it did the last five times she tried. It’s something to focus on for the few seconds that her mind is her own, a quick twist of thought more astute than Jace had expected turning the impulse for suicide to murder: _anything that happens to her is worth it if she can take this monster down_ —

He bites the panic away but doesn’t dismiss it. Better not to waste material he could put to use; this is hard enough as it is. Jace pulls as much of the emotion out of his mind as he can and seals it instead of dismissing it, waiting for Tezzeret to signal him to pull her under again.

“It took you longer to arrive at that realization than I would have expected,” Tezzeret says mildly, and the Orzhov finally looks back at him. “This could have been over so much quicker, if you’d only wanted it to.”

Jace breathes, shuddering with relief at not being watched. The interval was maybe fifteen seconds. At least she wasn’t screaming; his ears still hurt from how long she’d kept that up.

“Now,” Tezzeret continues, and with focus unwavering on her he places a knife—small, unremarkable—on the table between them. She doesn’t lunge for it (to try to kill Jace or to try to kill herself are the options in her mind; Tezzeret only figures into it insofar as she realizes he’d stop her) but it’s a near thing. “As I see it, I have two options. You and I can continue our conversation from earlier. Or I could leave you two alone.”

Jace can tell from his presence in her mind and the way her shoulders move that the noise that comes out of her mouth was supposed to be a sob. She’s been screaming for so long before she stopped being able that it’s a croaking noise; she doesn’t have any tears left, either. Her spoken words are a whisper, but they’re loud to her own ears, and so to Jace as well. “No,” she says, through cracked lips. “Not him. Not him. _Not him_. I’ll do whatever you want. Please.”

“I thought you would,” Tezzeret says, with a shift in expression that on someone warmer might have been a smile. “So…”

Jace’s task here is finished, and he tells himself that means he’s relieved of his implicit duty to look intimidating. He stops listening to her mind or to the conversation, and wraps his arms around himself, and tries to convince himself that anyone who’d consider him more dangerous than Tezzeret is… something. Misinformed. An idiot. Anything that would let him stop thinking about it.


End file.
